


Merely Players

by Sharpiefan



Series: The Shakespeare Series [19]
Category: The London Life (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, References to Shakespeare, Regency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 15:14:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6990667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharpiefan/pseuds/Sharpiefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Can't you just read, and let me listen?”</p><p>“Your education was singularly lacking and since you are now a Fitzgerald, it is high time you developed a proper understanding of the Bard.”</p><p>Robbie gives Bee a lesson in appreciating Shakespeare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merely Players

_All the world's a stage,_   
_And all the men and women merely players:_   
_They have their exits and their entrances;_   
_And one man in his time plays many parts,_   
_His acts being seven ages._

          - _As You Like It_ , Act II Sc VII

 

  **(In camp in Spain, early 1812)  
**

“Can't you just read, and let me listen?” Bee Fitzgerald took up her sewing again with determination.  
   
“You're always complaining that you don't understand half of what he means when I do read it,” Robbie pointed out, putting the book on the table. “Your education was singularly lacking and since you are now a Fitzgerald, it is high time you developed a proper understanding of the Bard.”  
   
In reply, Bee rolled her eyes and grabbed a cushion to throw at him. “I knew there was a reason I should have turned your proposal down.”  
   
“But you didn't,” her husband replied, laughing as he caught the projectile. He tossed it back onto the sofa before coming to kneel in front of his wife, his hands either side of her hips as she sat on the sofa.  
   
She deliberately marked her place in her sewing and looked at him. “You wretch! Just because I once said yes when you were on your knees does not mean that trick will work again!” she said, laughing in reply even as she raised her hand to tap him on the nose.  
   
He caught her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art lovelier and more temperate...”  
   
“Let me have my hand back,” Bee said, still smiling as she looked down into her husband's brown eyes.  
   
Robbie did not relinquish it. “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date,” he continued, now clasping her hand with both of his.  
   
“You should have been born in the... sixteenth century.”  
   
“Under the Virgin Queen? I doubt I would have made anything much of myself if I had – I am not cut out for sailing to the unknown and bringing back such prosaic things as.... potatoes.” He finally relinquished her hand, and she rewarded him by tangling her fingers in his hair and bending for a kiss.  
   
“I thought we were going to enlighten you as to the apparently impenetrable mysteries of the greatest of all English playwrights?” Robbie said, one eyebrow lifted, as they finally broke the kiss. Then, in quite a different tone he exclaimed, “Oh, ah – my foot!” and scrambled to stand, shaking his leg out. “How dashed unromantic can you get?” he added, with a frown, eventually putting his foot down again.  
   
“All right, then.” Bee folded her hands demurely in her lap, although Robbie was not in the least taken in by her acting. “Why is he so...” She flipped a hand impatiently, unable to find quite the word she was after.  
   
Robbie crossed to the table, his foot still with the residual prickle of the pins-and-needles, and picked the book up. “Because the language is beautiful – like music. Because there is so much depth to it. And, he understands people, whether they are princes or publicans.”  
   
He came to sit beside his wife, carelessly tossing the cushion to the floor, and receiving a slap to the knee for it.  
   
“Here," he said, opening the book to the page he had previously marked. “He writes his lines much as... as a piece of music is written, but you don't play it as it's written, pausing at the end of every bar. So you don't need to pause at the end of the line, but continue reading as though it's prose.”  
   
The text was the Merchant of Venice, and he had opened it right to the beginning. “See here – a lot of his plays open with a prologue setting the scene, but here, it is Antonio himself, and he's telling us the reader – the audience, really – that he's sad about something, but doesn't know what, or why. And his friend here explains that he's worried about the merchant ships he owns that are at sea. _Your mind is tossing on the ocean; There, where your argosies with portly sail Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, Do overpeer the petty traffickers, That curtsy to them, do them reverence, As they fly by them with their woven wings._ But he's describing them, see, here – comparing them to the rich burghers of the town?”  
   
Bee was nodding with a slowly dawning comprehension.  
   
“But he describes things because it makes the entertainment last longer and because the picture is more vivid than his just saying, You're worried about your ships at sea, of course.”  He turned a few pages and passed the book across to her, causing her to lay her needlework to one side. “Here, try this,” he said, indicating Portia's speech. “You'll find the rhythm of the words easy enough, everything else can come later.”  
   
She started, a little hesitantly at reading his beloved Shakespeare in front of a man who was so good at performing it himself. “The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown.” She passed the book back. “I don't think I will ever understand him, or read him, like you do, Robbie. But thank you, for trying.”  
   
She leaned in to kiss him, and the book slipped unheeded from her lap to the floor.


End file.
